My Favorite Artists With Under 50,000 Listeners
In a time where Spotify will often persistently recommend the same five artists, it’s difficult for smaller, lesser known artists to reach their intended audience. It seems that unless you’re the rare artist whose songs are blowing up on TikTok, an overnight boom in fans is unlikely. The algorithm for both Spotify and TikTok has become increasingly dependent upon and more and more selective. As a result, it can be difficult for the average listener to form connections with smaller bands looking for an audience. ..
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Dark Witchy Music
Now that November is upon us, some might say that we have to leave the Halloween spirit in the past. However, those same individuals do not realize that by venturing deeper into the past, we can hold onto the spookiness of October, even in its department. Join me on a moonlit journey where we journey back to the mid-20th century to find unrecognized eerie music of the late 1950s to the early 1970s.
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Help, I’m Growing Up: A Playlist for Life’s Transitions
Do you remember how we used to be little kids? With baby fat protecting the veins on the backs of our hands and the bones beneath our cheeks. When you look in the mirror, do you see your face? Is it the same face you’ve always had? Maybe it’s thinner, stronger, more tired. Maybe you’re happy to be this older version of yourself.
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Right on Time
I was always the last one to finish the mile in middle school. Chubby and morally opposed to forced exercise, I found myself minutes behind my classmates– always sweaty and short of breath by the end of my seven laps, embarrassed that I couldn’t keep up.
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Honey & Lavender
Lately, I’ve been noticing the large amount of songs in my rotation that contain the word “honey”: “Honey Hi,” “Hunnybee,” “Honeybody,” and just plain “Honey.” Instead of just making a playlist with songs about honey, I decided to switch it up a bit, alternating each honey song with a song about, or vaguely relating to, lavender.
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Five hundred and twenty-eight tons
Johnny Cash. Stevie Wonder. Tom Jones. ZZ Top. Jimmy Dean of microwave breakfast stardom. What do these artists have in common? They’ve all covered the song “Sixteen Tons,” originally written by the American folk artist Merle Travis in 1947.
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Up & At ‘Em! (or, Thoughts on Morning Music from a Non-Morning Person)
As a bit of a running joke, my dad famously woke up to the song “Need A Little Sunshine” by Augustana every morning for several years. It’s a perfect song for easing into the day; it doesn’t jolt you awake, but it has just the right amount of energy to motivate you to get up, get dressed, and get out of the house…
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I Knew Happiness When I Saw It
The summer after my senior year of high school, right before we all headed off to college, my best friends and I would go on these long drives. Mostly, we’d fantasize what the next four years would be for us, and we’d always come back to the fear we’d become such radically different people. The fear that one day, we wouldn’t know each other anymore.
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Heartbreaks: A Taxonomy
I imagine that, in the fifties, things were simple. A boy asked you out, you were “going together,”, he took you to the sock hop (what even is a sock hop?) and then he dumped you right before home-ec. I’m not saying it was easy, but it was simple. It was clear cut. (Or maybe it wasn’t at all, sorry grandma.)
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